Friday, October 12, 2012

Fw: New FactCheck Article: Veep Debate Violations

Veep Debate Violations

Ryan, Biden rough up the facts in their one and only meeting.

Summary

The Biden-Ryan debate was marked by some spirited claims that didn't always match the facts.

Ryan said Obama's proposal to let tax rates rise for high-income individuals would "tax about 53 percent of small-business income." Wrong. Ryan is counting giant hedge funds and thousands of other multimillion-dollar enterprises as "small" businesses.

Biden exaggerated when he said House Republicans cut funding for embassy security by $300 million. The amount approved for fiscal year 2012 was $264 million less than requested, and covers construction and maintenance, not just security.

Ryan was wrong when he said a rise in the jobless rate in Biden's hometown was "how it's going all around America." The rate nationally has sunk back to where it was when Obama took office. And in Ryan's hometown, it's more than 4 percentage points lower that it was at the start of Obama's term.

Biden seemed to question Ryan's assertion that administration officials called Syrian President Bashar Assad "a reformer" even when he was killing his own civilian countrymen. Ryan was right. Early in the bloody Syrian uprising Hillary Clinton called Assad a "different leader" who many in Congress believe is "a reformer."

Ryan claimed the Obama administration spent stimulus money on "electric cars in Finland." Not true. Although the cars have been assembled in Finland, the money went for work in the United States.

Biden quoted Romney as saying that he would not "move heaven and earth" to get Osama bin Laden. What Romney said was that he'd go after other terrorists as well.

Ryan misquoted a Medicare official as saying "one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business" as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Not quite. The official said that many could become "unprofitable," and the the situation could be monitored to head off bad outcomes.

Ryan claimed that the ACA contains "taxpayer funding" of abortion. In fact the law provides no direct funding of abortion except in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother's life. And it's a matter of interpretation whether subsidized private insurance would amount to indirect federal support for abortion.

Ryan was off base when he said of a cost-saving panel created by the Affordable Care Act, "not one of them even has to have medical training." Actually, the board must include physicians and other health care professionals among its members.

Ryan at one point ground out a collection of shopworn misstatements about the health care law that we've had to rebut time and again, claiming "20 million people are projected to lose their health insurance" (not true), that premiums have gone up $3,000 (no, they haven't) and that 7.4 million seniors "are going to lose" Medicare Advantage plans (maybe, but they'd still be covered by traditional Medicare).

And both Biden and Ryan continued to twist the facts about Romney's tax plan. Biden again misrepresented the findings of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, and Ryan repeated a misleading claim that "six studies have verified" that the plan is mathematically possible.

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